Showing posts with label John Schlesinger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Schlesinger. Show all posts
30 March 2015
Blu-ray Review - Darling (1965)
Genre:
Satire
Distributor:
Studiocanal;
BD Release Date:
30th March 2015
Rating:15
Director:
John Schlesinger
Cast:
Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, Laurence Harvey, Roland Curram, Alex Scott
Buy: Darling - [Blu-ray]
Darling stars Julie Christie at the height of her fame during the 1960s. John Schlesinger, who would go on to make other classic films later like Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man, directed it. It’s a terribly dated, but fascinating slice of the swinging 60s.
Christie plays the model/actress Diane Scott in the midst of the changing values of the swinging 60s. She is married to an immature yet perfectly decent bloke, but she meets a literary interview/TV personality Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde) and they start an affair. Both of their respective marriages end and they end up getting married. Scott however isn’t faithful to her husband and screws the advertising executive Myles Brand (Laurence Harvey) so she can get a part in a euro trash thriller. The rest of the film is basically the inner conflicts she has with herself, and the relationships she has with both men and eventually a third while she rises in her fame. Near the end of the film she is hounded by a paparazzi.
Julie Christie of course looks great in the film; one of the film’s Oscars was for best costume design. Bogarde who as everyone knows was a tormented man (he was gay) gives a performance of world-weariness and dissatisfaction with his middle class life and brings some much-needed darkness. Laurence Harvey however is the standout as Gold, he is a amoral and corrupt to the core, he is so twisted and evil it reminds me of the Bill Hicks routine where he tell anyone in advertising to “kill yourself, it’s the only way to save your fucking soul”.
The film attempts to be a satire on the emptiness of the rich white middle class lifestyle. The film has an extremely unsubtle opening where a poster of Diane covers a charity poster of poverty stricken kids in Africa. However the satire never really works, there is a scene where they are upper class ball/dinner and black kids are dressed up in servants’ costumes. It’s obviously supposed to show up the hosts as racist bigots but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
The film does look best as a dark cynical slice of British New Wave cinema. It is taking it’s cues from Truffaut, Godard and most overtly Antonioni. The 3 leads are outstanding in this forward thinking film. At the time it was a daring film that touched on abortion, homosexuality, infidelity, the changing sexual roles in society etc. The hipness of the film is too knowing for it’s own good, and the lack of knowledge of popular music is strange, there is like one pop song in the whole film despite the mention of Diane’s large record collection early on. It’s certainly doesn’t nail the zeitgeist as much as the later Blow-Up, or even Schlesinger’s game changer Midnight Cowboy, but it’s a solid film.
★★★★
Ian Schultz
6 May 2013
Billy Liar Blu-Ray Review (50th Anniversary Edition)
Billy Liar is Bradford’s one and only claim to fame. It was shot there and is set in an unnamed Yorkshire village. It’s so much a part of “Bradford’s culture heritage” there is a mosaic in the subway near it’s world renowned media museum.
As the title suggests it’s about a young man called Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) and liars his way though out the film especially to his many girlfriends (he is engaged to 2 of them). He is working for a morticians but he stole all these calendars and some money. He seems to be hopeless but he has his imagination to keep him company, he dreams of the mythical land “Ambrosia” which is king, general, don juan figure etc. A lass called Liz (Julie Christie) comes back from London who he has known before and she tells him to come to London with her and the last act is how he reacts to that and other events.
The film was directed by John Schlesinger who would later make such bonafide classics such as Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man and other important films like Sunday Bloody Sunday. The first surprising thing about Billy Liar is it’s a totally heterosexual film; many of his films dealt with homosexuality or had homoerotic subtext (like in Marathon Man) but I know he was still “in the closet” at this time. It’s probably his first classic film and he did get his start in Kitchen sink dramas.
Billy is a bit of a shit to be honest but he is a terribly in mature lad whose head is in the stars even he is looking at the gutter. Tom Courtenay is a bit to old for the role to be honest. People claim it’s a comedy and it’s not really, it’s a film about a boy trying to grow up but isn’t quite there yet (which is evident in the film’s last few moments) and you feel sorry for his mum especially at the end.
The film belongs to the British New Wave movement, which for the most part were kitchen sink dramas. I’ve never been a fan of them and tend to prefer the more surreal side of 60s British cinema like If…, Performance and Blow-Up. I do however quite like Billy Liar but it does have scenes of fantasy quite famously. The film is probably as good as the genre ever got and the film will make you fall madly in love with a young Julie Christie which isn’t a bad thing.
Ian Schultz
Release Date: 6th May 2013 (UK)
Rating: PG
Director:John Schlesinger
Cast: Tom Courtenay, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne
Buy Billy Liar: 50th Anniversary Edition [Blu-ray] [1963]
/ DVD
20 March 2013
John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar Restored On Blu-Ray For 50th Anniversary May Release
Tom Courtenay delivers a star-making turn as William Terrence Fisher (‘Billy Liar’) in one of the most memorable and universally acclaimed films of the 60s.
Running from an unsympathetic working-class family, a pair of demanding fiancées and an insecure job at an undertakers, Billy escapes, Walter Mitty-like, into a world of fantasy where he can realize his dream ambitions. As work and family pressures build to new intolerable levels, Liz (an early, charismatic turn from Julie Christie), enters his drab life and offers Billy the one real chance he’ll ever get to leave the past behind.
Scripted by Keith Waterhouse from his own novel, and sensitively directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy), Billy Liar is one of the few comedies of the British ‘New Wave’, marrying visual and verbal wit with a rather poignant rumination on the futility of dreams.
The newly restored version of Billy Liar will also screen as part of this year’s Bradford International Film Festival, hosted by Bradford UNESCO City of Film on Sunday 14 April.
David Wilson, Director of Bradford UNESCO City of Film said, ‘Billy Liar is a key component within Bradford's rich film heritage and formed part of our bid to become the world's first UNESCO City of Film. It is still an important reference within film studies and I am really pleased that the 50th Anniversary edition on DVD/ BLU-RAY will bring the film to whole new audience.'
On Saturday 13 April Tom Courtenay will also be the festival’s guest of honour where he will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. [more details can be found here]
• Remembering Billy Liar with Tom Courtenay and Helen Fraser
• Interview with Richard Ayoade
• A look through the Keith Waterhouse Archive with British Library Curator Zoe Wilcox
• Interview with Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley
• Stills Gallery
• Trailer
Pre-order/Buy Billy Liar 50th Anniversary Edition:DVD
/ Blu-ray
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